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FYI christmas started this weekend in the netherlands and lasts all the way until the end of the year.
It is kinda a big deal :)
@freemo Yeah two weeks ago the shopping center here in Portugal was already fully Christmas decorated and so. It's a bit crazy. In Belgium I think we wait until Sinterklaas happened :)
@stevenroose In the netherlands It is signaled and coordinated throughout the country in a rather unexpected way.
First he arrives somewhere in the capital by boat with his zwartepieten (black petes). At that point the holiday beings (was a day or two). At that point there is a schedule where he travels to each town in the netherlands one after the other. The town new me, Houten, is next week. At that point the local city he has visited will have zwartepiet floating around for some time until the holiday ends. They usually give out candy.
Best part is, they have TWO christmases here. Once sinterklaas is done giving all the kids diabetes. and giving them toys then Christmas starts which is apparently a seperate holiday for the Dutch. This time its a fat guy on a slay, again with plenty of candy and toys :)
@freemo Yeah well before there was no Santa. So Christmas is about Jesus and Sinterklaas is about the Saint for the children. Santa is just a commercial icon from Coca Cola that is actually based on Sinterklaas (Santa Claus), but they got the holiday wrong :/ Santa is a recent invention and it didn't used to be part of Christmas culture until Coca Cola brought it with their ads.
@stevenroose Thats only partly true. Coca-cola did define the visual image of santacause that we see, the red robe, for example. However the idea of santa in its american iteration existed quite a bit before that.
The poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" written in 1823 described the sled and reindeer and most other american properties of christmas well before the images produces by coca cola. While that poem was about the time where most of the properties of christmas we know in america became canon many of those ideas in other form were around (though less adopted) before that.
You are right of course that it comes from sinterklaas though. But the dutch have re-adopted it. So now there are two christmases here, one that is going on now, then a second one that lines up more with the american version later.
@freemo But Sinterklaas is in no way whatsoever related to Christmas... It's the patron Saint for the children and his anniversary is celebrated December 6th. I didn't know Saint Nicolas (the same Saint we refer to as Sinterklaas or Sint Niklaas) was celebrated before in the US. I'm curious from what point on and where the association with Christmas started..
@stevenroose Here is a good source on what christmas was like iin the first american settlements back when it was a purely english tradition. Remember by 1823 though this tradition evolved into a merger of traditions from across europe
https://www.historyisfun.org/jamestown-settlement/a-colonial-christmas/christmas-traditions/
